rms@AI.MIT.EDU (Richard Stallman) (02/03/91)
Lately I'm seeing a lot of people using gnu.emacs.help (aka help-gnu-emacs) to reports bugs in GNU Emacs. For example, someone recently reported that certain Lisp code that had worked in earlier versions did not work in 18.56. Anything like that is a bug and should be treated as such. Likewise, if Emacs crashes, that is a bug. If Emacs gets compilation errors while building, that is a bug. If Emacs crashes while building, that is a bug. If Lisp code does not do what the documentation says it does, that is a bug. The help list isn't the proper place for bug reports. The proper way to report a bug is to mail a message to bug-gnu-emacs@prep. Don't post the report as news, because that fails to give a valid route back to you. Don't send it to help-gnu-emacs (aka gnu.emacs.help) because it wastes the time of people who (by choosing not to read bug-gnu-emacs) have indicated they are not interested. It also bogs down our mailer. If you have reported a bug and you don't hear about a possible fix, then after a suitable delay (such as a week) then it is okay to post on gnu.emacs.help asking if anyone can help you. Thanks for your cooperation.